My car will be 18 months old come the spring time, I think it could do with a single stage light cut polish, just to enhance the look. As Muzzer points out, a good safe wash regime should reduce the need for regular polishing.

Mostimes once a year after assessment, solid colours seem to get a little dull after 12 - 16 month.
Also I find my car is getting more swirled if used hard on motorway traveling, wonder if the dirt swirled up cause light damage.

If i remember mine was done like 3 years ago fully correcting every defect I've then just done a light enhancement once a year mainly when seasons change and to keep it looking it's best for show season. After that i just use a cleanser to remove old wax and reapply my chosen lsp. As already said if your wash routine is correct you will only need to polish once a year if that i maybe wrong but swirls are going to happen even with a bang on routine it's just the nature of the beast clearly not as bad as if you take it to the local scratch wash but never the less they will appear

Whenever the subject comes up, people seem to get confused about polishing/cutting/correcting/compounding, probably because the language used doesn’t really have any clear definition and is often used to describe different things using the same words. Polishing could mean a quick coat of SRP or Megs Ultimate, or it could mean using Scholl S3 on a rotary, which would give very different results.

So I would say aggressive cutting polishes should only be used to correct defects, so as and when required but only up to a point. If someone brings you a car in need of serious correction and you lay into it with a heavy compound only to find you start getting paint transfer, chances are it’s alreay been done more than a few times and you’re in a world of hurt. Using a filler polish like SRP that has virtually zero cut is a very different thing, and could be done on a regular basis.

Too many factors to consider
But personally for me it would depend totally on the cars condition when I first get it,
Also it's colour- My car is palladium silver( light grey mercedes) and it hides swirls very well, I've only hand polished it once since owning it as its in lovely condition
I decontaminate every few months though, but use a pre wax cleaner before LSP

I would only machine polish it if I were looking to go down the ceramic coating route and I don't think I would again.

Whenever the subject comes up, people seem to get confused about polishing/cutting/correcting/compounding, probably because the language used doesn’t really have any clear definition and is often used to describe different things using the same words. Polishing could mean a quick coat of SRP or Megs Ultimate, or it could mean using Scholl S3 on a rotary, which would give very different results.

So I would say aggressive cutting polishes should only be used to correct defects, so as and when required but only up to a point. If someone brings you a car in need of serious correction and you lay into it with a heavy compound only to find you start getting paint transfer, chances are it’s alreay been done more than a few times and you’re in a world of hurt. Using a filler polish like SRP that has virtually zero cut is a very different thing, and could be done on a regular basis.

Some people use "polish" to mean "any activity that will make a car shinier" (even including wax - partly because cleaner waxes with light abrasives in them have also blurred the line between waxing and polishing).

I'd say any kind of compounding would ideally be a once in a lifetime thing for any car, and even then done as sympathetically as possible.

You could probably use a fine finishing polish like Scholl S40 on a car every year or even every six months a without causing any problems (especially on hard or medium paints).

Paint cleaners with essentially no cut, in my opinion can be used as often as you like. Plenty folks use(d) SRP every week.

All that said - the wrong choice of pad and compound on soft(ish) paint could put you within microns of clearcoat strikethrough